Tumblr: The Birth of The Ebony Quill

Verse of the Day: For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10:13

The year was 2018, I'd recently acquired new found freedom and moved into the apartment complex of my dreams. I'd just been promoted to lead teacher and given my own class with a lovely assistant. My students were learning and having fun in the classroom, and I contemplated on my creative future during their nap times and personal lunch breaks. I wanted to write my books, I wanted to sell my art, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate my day to day adventures into both. Blogging was not my first choice but something I added to a small sticky note of ideas. After work one afternoon, I headed down to the updated and fully functional computer room and researched "Blog Sites", The first to pop up was Tumblr, So I gave it a look and was completely taken over. I recalled saving a plethora of items from Tumblr from Facebook, and I found it easy navigate and learn. I'd found my platform, but now I needed a plan.

I spent about a month, brainstorming and outlining into the night. The original blog will be a blend of everything I loved and adored, every day was a theme and written in advanced before edited and set in a que to be published. My work load at school began to grow, and that meant less time to write, edit and promote my blog. I created business cards and spoke to people about my new writing outlet. It was never to get any money, but a way to build an audience before I became a published author. Tumblr and me had a lovely run, I STILL love Tumblr and visit from time to time just to go down memory lane. I acquired a healthy audience and my love for the written arts expanded as I nestled myself into a new community. One afternoon, while talking to my boyfriend (now fiancé) about blogging when he suggested that I start my own blogging site from scratch. I'd never even thought about it. As much as I loved writing on Tumblr, why not create a platform of my own? I did a bit of research and discovered Wix, you could call it the adult of Tumblr with more creative freedom and a lack of aesthetics (I mean that with the best of intentions) I discovered the mechanics of what it took to create sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, ect. There was more to it than just pressing "post" someone had to program the buttons to make their reactions and even choose how the post button would look. It was time to learn a new skill. Web design.

I drew outlines, watched videos and played around with the tool bar in the website editor to learn the in's and out's of everything. Things were quite confusing at first, but eventually I figured it out. I began transitioning blogs from Tumblr to My new site and it hit me....I needed to go a different route. I'd leave my tumblr up but I needed to be more concise with what I was writing about in order to secure a specific audience, I prayed about it very hard and over the years that followed, I decided that my work needed to be a reflection of my spiritual walk, my love for the written arts and for people. I made it my objective to post Godly and spiritual inspiration, as well as how it connects to my writing, I would make a few personal posts where I share my work and over time, The Ebony Quill blossomed into what it is today. I'll always have Tumblr to thank for that :), and in honor of the Quills birth site, I'll share the link to my first page below. We all start somewhere, I'm glad Tumblr was mine.

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ebonyquillhand

(photo taken from my personal page)

"For the love of life and literature, stay prayerful, stay positive and write on!"